Best Practice for Creating A Student Scholarship Recipient Record

Erica Warner 2

Hello Everyone!

I am working to clean up a RE database, and we want to create some new policy and procedures. How does everyone else here add in student scholarship recipients? I don't have an address for the student. All I have is there name, scholarship award year, scholarship name, and award amount.

Thanks in advance! ?

Dariel Dixon 2

@Erica Warner I think you should rethink this idea. As a general rule I don't think you should create constituents for individuals that you don't have some method of contacting them, whether its a physical or email address, or at least a phone number. If you just have a name, how will you make sure you're not going to make duplicates for these records?

I would check and see if there is a way for you to get some contact information for some of the scholarship recipients. I find it strange that you wouldn't at least have some of that data.

Christine Robertson 4

@Erica Warner I would tend to agree with @Dariel Dixon. I would push to see if you can at least have the student's ID from the student tracking system, graduation year, major, etc. so that you can later link this to the student's alumni record.

Erica Warner 2

@Dariel Dixon Thank You! I think that is going to be my approach. I appreciate the advice

Erica Warner 2

@Christine Robertson Thank you!

Christine Robertson 4

@Erica Warner You're welcome! How are you tracking the Scholarships? I've seen that done quite a few ways so I'm curious what you've landed on.

Faith Murray

@Erica Warner
Seconding the suggestion not to create a constituent record for non-identified scholarship recipients. You may be able to track this in RE through another means, however, such as the Tribute function. Another option is to create a record for the scholarship itself, and then create non-constituent relationships within that record for the students.

Erica Warner 2

@Faith Murray Thank you! I love that as a back-up idea if i cannot get additional information.

Erica Warner 2

@Christine Robertson we have each fund set-up separately and I am currently seeing if i can get student addresses or not. Then if not, take the feedback i got here to try